


Maybe they'll leave you alone, but not me

by ghostfrog



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - School, Conspiracy Theories, English Teacher Jonathan Sims, Fix-It, Fluff, IB Program, International Baccalaureate, Multi, Student OCs - Freeform, Teacher AU, Trans Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Trans Male Character, Trans Martin Blackwood, rated for language, the timeline is fixed before the fic even starts but the point is everything is fine, this is the most niche thing I have ever written
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24720844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostfrog/pseuds/ghostfrog
Summary: Francis, Grace, Nadia and Theo don't know anything about an averted apocalypse. The four of them just want to talk about cryptids and get through the IB diploma program without dying of stress or caffeine overdose.Meanwhile, Jon decides to take up a teaching position at a nearby school.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 291
Kudos: 804





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Four gay nerds who love cryptids and conspiracy theories get the weirdest English teacher they've ever had. Or, I live vicariously through my OCs to fulfill my deepest, darkest fantasy, which is to get good grades and my diploma.
> 
> Title from Teenagers by My Chemical Romance.

It was a few months after Martin found and subsequently burned Jonah’s statement that Jon started getting restless. 

“I don’t know what we should be doing now. We came here to wait it all out, and now - well, it feels like there’s nothing to wait for.”

Martin seemed to consider it, and took a sip of his rapidly cooling tea. “We could get jobs.”

“I want a sense of purpose, Martin, not a return to the crushing and constant weight of capitalism.”

“Well, it doesn’t have to be for the money. We don’t pay rent, and you don’t really eat anymore. Lots of jobs don’t pay well but are still fulfilling. Like teaching.”

“Teaching sounds awful. I’m not going to babysit a bunch of little kids.”

“There’s always high schoolers.”

“Arguably worse.”

And Martin had hummed in agreement, and they returned to their books and read in companionable silence.

\---

So when a week passed and Jon asked Martin how to fake a CV, it was a bit of a shock.

“I thought you said teaching sounded awful?”

“Well, yeah. But think about it - I can Know everything. I can answer any question. I’d be a great teacher.” 

Martin looked at him doubtfully. 

“I would!”

“Alright. We can go down to the village tomorrow and get some wifi.”

\---

It definitely should not have worked. Certainly not as well as it did. But now here Jon was, gazing at the empty desks in front of him. The curriculum for the semester was laid out across his desk, along with notes from the previous teacher on where she had left off. Standard reading, mostly, if a bit more diverse than he would have expected. Some Shakespeare, Milton, a few authors from the Americas that Martin liked but that he had never really gotten into. 

Students had started to file in, and Jon tried to look busy. He took one last look at the syllabus as the bell rang before he stepped in front of the whiteboard.

“Hello everyone, I’m Mr. Sims. As some of you have noticed,” and here he glanced at a trio of girls whispering to each other, “I am not, in fact, Mrs. Fleming. I don’t know why exactly she decided to leave so early in the semester, but I will be taking over her classes until either the year ends or they find someone more qualified.” 

In the back row, a boy laughed out loud. Jon gave him a look. 

“I will admit that this is my first time teaching IB students,” or students in general for that matter, but they didn’t need to know that, “but I assure you I know what I’m doing.” 

Now that was just a lie.

\---

Martin had encouraged this. “You’ll do great! What can go wrong, it’s an English class. You like reading.”

“There’s poetry on this list, Martin. You know how I feel about poetry.”

“You have exceptions-”

“Fucking Percy Shelley! What an old bastard.”

“It will be fine.”

\---

“I understand you have IOs at the end of next term. We’ll be practicing academic speaking throughout this semester and we’ll start working on some more concrete prep a month or two before. I’ll do my best to prepare you so you can all get good marks on that, but I encourage you all to start thinking about those sooner rather than later. Firstly, it will be less stressful for you if you do, and secondly, I don’t want to be swamped in parent complaints when all your procrastination catches up to you.” 

Jon had been an IB student once. It was different now, but student habits never change. His ability to bullshit fluently was coming back to him. 

“Don’t worry about SL versus HL for now. You’ll be able to pick which level you take next year, and the only difference is the higher level essay anyway. Now that’s all out of the way, I’m going to take roll. You know what to do.”

\---

Nadia could keep it together. She could. She waited for Grace to finish packing her bag, and then she rushed the two of them out the door, past Mr. Sims’s desk.

“Grace. What the fuck.”

“Oh my gosh, right? That was staggeringly bizarre.”

“I don’t think he even blinked the whole period.” Nadia waited as Grace drank from the water fountain. 

“I wanted to get my phone out to text Theo but I felt like he’d see it no matter how well I hid it.”

“Like I said, what the fuck!”

“What class do you have next?”

“French. I have to tell Francis about the new cryptid, this will blow his ‘Mr. Williams keeps replacing the class gerbil with minutely different copies’ theory out of the water.”

“Make sure to tell him not to make eye contact. I feel like he knows my innermost secrets now.”

“You’re so overdramatic! You just met him, and you didn’t even talk except for roll call. He can’t possibly know your secrets.”

“What if that’s what he wants you to think, hm?”

“Shut up. I’ll see you at lunch.”

\---

Theo hated introducing himself to new teachers. It was always awkward trying to correct the name in the school records, and he was shy to begin with, and it just really, really sucked. 

Which is why it surprised him when the new English teacher got to the name before him, frowned at the clipboard, and scribbled something on the attendance sheet. “Theo Daniels?”

Theo was stunned enough that Mr. Sims had to repeat his name before he could call ‘present!’

He was still reeling ten minutes later, when he heard his name again. “Theo?”

He zoned back in to see half the class looking at him expectantly. “Sorry, um, could you repeat the question, please?”

“ **What are your thoughts on the passage we just read?** ”

Theo was ready to bluff his way through an answer when he felt a buzzing at the back of his skull. He shivered. 

“I wasn’t listening.”

Mr. Sims’s face was quickly matching Theo’s in color and mortification. 

“I am so sorry, sir, I don’t know why I said that, I didn’t - I mean, I did kind of zone out, but I didn’t mean- sorry, I-”

Mr. Sims cut him off. “No, that’s quite alright, Theo, why don’t you read it over and I’ll come back around to you. It’s on page forty three.”

“Right. Thank you.” He started reading, ears red.

\---

“I don’t know what he is but I like him.”

Nadia smirked. “Had Mr. Sims last period?”

“He knew my name.”

“He knows all of our names. They’re on the attendance sheet,” Grace pointed out.

“No, I mean my actual name. It’s not changed in the system yet, so on attendance it’s still...” He gestured vaguely with his hand.

“Oh.” Her eyes widened. “ _Oh._ ”

“Yeah. Weird, right?”

Nadia shrugged. ”Maybe one of the other teachers told him. Mrs. Fleming seems like the type, she probably let him know so you wouldn’t have to do the ‘hey I’m trans’ talk again. Two times for one class seems excessive.”

“Mrs. Fleming barely acknowledged my existence.”

“Yeah, ‘cause you never talked. Doesn’t mean she wouldn’t let Sims know.”

Theo fidgeted with his fork, moving the supposed spaghetti around the tray. “He asked me to talk about a passage and I straight up told him I hadn’t been paying attention.”

“Why would you do that? You know how to bullshit that sort of thing, just say something about author choices and move on.”

“I don’t know, Grace! It was like, he asked, and I couldn’t _not_ tell him the truth. It was freaky.”

“Maybe he’s hypnotizing us.”

“I think we would notice if we were being hypnotized.”

“You can never be too sure.”

“Maybe he just seems trustworthy. Like, he’s got one of those faces.”

“Unlikely. Dude’s way too strange for his face to register as anything other than just… weird.”

Theo gave a noncommittal hum at that. 

“Coming through!”

The three of them looked up to see Francis slipping through a crowd of first years. He set his lunch tray down with emphasis and looked Theo in the eye. “Theories on Sims’s scars. Go.”

“The one on his neck or the circular ones?”

“Both. Stop stalling.”

“Shit. Um.” He glanced up at the ceiling, wracking his brains for inspiration. “He’s an American secret agent in deep cover. Got the scars from being tortured with like, cigarettes and stuff.”

“That would explain the accent.”

Theo nodded. “That’s definitely fake. No one talks like that.”

“The issue is we’ve covered the secret agent angle already with Mr. Kolskov. Nadia?”

She swore, and finished her bite of spaghetti before answering. “I think tiny aliens laid eggs in him as part of their scheme to overthrow the government and achieve world domination.”

“And the one on his neck?”

“Sometimes it be like that.”

“Fair enough. Grace?”

“I bet he’s the alien, but like, he got his disguise from looking at corpses.”

“Why wouldn’t he just look at real people?” Theo asked.

“Corpses don’t call the police when they see a Martian.”

Francis smiled. “Well, you’re all wrong. Clearly, he’s had a close encounter with a chupacabra, and its acid spit dissolved his skin. The one on his neck is also from the chupacabra attack, where it tried to go in for the kill but it was so freaked out by his eyes that it turned tail and ran.”

Nadia gave him a doubtful look. “Chupacabras don’t have acid spit. It would have to be a Mongolian death worm.”

“ _That’s_ the only issue you have with that theory?”

She shrugged. ”It’s not the weirdest one you’ve come up with.” 

The bell rang, and the four of them started clearing off their table. Grace whistled to get Theo’s attention.

“Wanna go to that new coffee place after school, or do you have work?”

He shook his head. “I’m not free till Friday.”

“Ah, well. I’ll see you in math tomorrow then.”

“See you. Better run or you'll be late to Spanish again.”

“I certainly will not,” she said in mock indignation.

Theo smiled. “Have fun.”

Grace grumbled and slung her bag over her shoulder. “You’ll pay for this, Daniels.”

“Uh huh. Sure.”

“I’m serious.”

“Bye now!”

\---

Theo shut his locker door and leaned his forehead against the cool metal. He sighed.

“Theo?” 

He jerked his head back and looked where the voice came from. Mr. Sims.

“If you have the time, I'd like to have a chat. It’ll only take a moment.”

Dread was starting to fill his stomach, and the buzzing was back. “Sure.” Mr. Sims nodded, and turned back into his classroom. Theo took a deep breath, and followed. 

It was always weird to be the only student in a classroom usually full of debate and the scratching of pencils. Mr. Sims gestured to a chair near his desk, and took a seat. Theo pulled it so he would be facing Mr. Sims, and followed suit.

“I really am sorry I wasn’t paying attention, I was just kind of out of it and you caught me off guard with the name thing, and it won’t happen again. Honest.”

Mr. Sims gave him a small smile, pulling a small packet of papers from a drawer. “I told you it was fine and I meant it, Theo. Don’t worry about it. Happens to the best of us.” Having flipped through the packet, he nodded and slid it across the desk. “Speaking of your name, that was actually the reason I wanted to talk.” 

“Oh.” He looked down at the packet. _Request to change student information._ He looked back up. “How did you know not to call me…. the other name? Earlier, I mean?”

He shifted in his seat, looking uncomfortable. “I- Mrs. Fleming let me know, before she left.”

Theo got the distinct sense he was lying. “Okay.”

“Anyway, those forms will let you change your name in the school system without needing a legal name change. You’ll need at least one parent signature, but I hope that won’t be an issue.”

“It won’t be. You’re pretty alright at this for a substitute.” 

“I would hope so.” He worried at his lip with his teeth, giving Theo a strange look. “Being trans is… often difficult. Especially at your age. And that’s probably not going to change anytime soon, but if there’s ever something I can do to help - if other students bother you about it, or teachers are being difficult - you can let me know.” He cleared his throat and started shuffling through his remaining papers.

“Thank you.” Theo didn’t move, despite the clear dismissal. 

Sims looked up at him, looking vaguely bemused. “ **Is there something else on your mind, Theo?** ”

That damned buzzing again. “Where did you get those scars?”

Mr. Sims froze. Theo clapped his hand over his mouth, and the two of them just stared at each other for a moment before Theo broke the silence.

“I don’t know why I asked that, I am so sorry again-”

“They’re bug bites.” 

Theo stared at him. “Bug bites.”

“Yes.”

“Bug bites don’t scar.” God, why couldn’t he shut up today?

“They were very big bugs.” Mr. Sims went back to packing up. “Exotic species.” 

“Right.” _Bullshit_. “Well, I should be leaving so-”

“Yes, quite right, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“See you.” And with that he all but ran out of the classroom.

Jon put his head on his desk and swore.

\---

“You told him they were _bug bites_?”

“Yes!” Jon glared. It was not threatening coming from his cocoon of blankets. “I also may have accidentally compelled him. Twice. But technically it’s not a lie!”

“Well, I suppose not but - bug bites? Really?”

“Worms are bugs.”

“Worms actually fall under the Annelida phylum, not Arthropoda.”

“ **How do you-** I mean, that’s a new bug fact.”

“Worm fact.” Martin corrected. “Well, bug and worm fact. It came up somehow in a statement while you were in your coma. I think it was... Buried and Corruption? My point is it stuck. Along with the fact that worms have five hearts."

“Bugs and worms are both Corruption.”

“Your students don’t know about the Entities.”

“Ideally they never will.”

Martin didn’t know how to respond to that, so he changed the subject. “You know, you could start making up wildly conflicting stories about your injuries. I did that with my top surgery scars, do you remember?”

“You told Tim you got in a knife fight.”

“Technically I did, I was just asleep while it was happening and I also didn’t have a knife.”

“Normal people call that surgery, Martin.”

“We haven’t been normal in a long time.”

“I suppose not.” They were silent for a while. “I used to claim that mine were from sneezing too hard.”

“You did not.” 

“I did. Back in uni.”

Martin was laughing too hard to reply now. Jon halfheartedly hit him with a pillow, before he joined in. 

\---

“I’m telling you, I asked him and he said they were bug bites.” 

Nadia gave him a doubtful glance.

“I’m serious! Would I lie to you?”

“Well, no, but-

Francis made a dissenting noise through his sandwich. He held up a finger and swallowed. “George Price asked him in my hour and he said they were from picking at scabs. No word on how he got wounds on his face deep enough to scab.”

Grace nodded. “No one’s asked yet in ours but I heard that Anna Lydia asked him during passing time and he just said ‘make sure you follow the lab safety guidelines in your chemistry classes.’ That’s fucked up, right?”

“That’s definitely fucked up.”

“Anna Lydia doesn’t even take chemistry. She's in my bio class.”

“Not the point, Theo.”

“I bet if we asked him he’d say they were from a bed-of-nails stunt gone horribly wrong or something.”

“Do you think he’ll come up with a new story every time, or just cycle through a couple?”

“Only one way to find out.” Francis grinned.

Nadia chewed on the end of her pen, looking pensive. “You know, it’s only been a day and a half and we already have more cryptid material on Mr. Sims than we’ve had on any other teacher. Ever. Doesn’t that seem sort of weird in itself?”

The bell rang, and they started bussing their trays. Francis bumped Theo’s elbow. “Can you come over to my place today? Nadia and Grace are both coming.”

“Sure, I’ll meet you by your locker?”

“Sounds good.”

\---

Francis’s bedroom was in the attic. It was always just a little bit too cold, but when he was twelve he’d called dibs on it, and four years later he couldn’t really complain. There was lots of space to hang posters and pinboards, and it was roomy enough that all four of them could be there without feeling crowded.

Red thread was everywhere. 

Grace spoke from her bean bag. “I know we’ve been focused on the east coast of America for a while, but I think we have to address the elephant in the room. Or in the school, I guess.”

Francis agreed. “What do we know about Mr. Sims? Just start talking, I’ll take notes.”

Nadia and Grace started off, going back and forth. “When you’re in his class, it always feels like he’s looking at you, even if he isn’t.”

“I don’t think he blinks?”

“Wears a glove on his right hand.”

“He’s got circular scars over parts of his face and neck, and his forearms. He changes his story about them whenever he’s asked.”

“And a scar on his neck - looks like a cut. And a deep one at that.”

“No one asks him about that one.”

Theo piped up. “When he asks a direct question, you can’t not answer.”

Francis looked up from his notebook. “That’s happened to you twice, Theo. What was it like?”

Theo sat forward a little, brow furrowed. “There was this - feeling. Going up my spine. And a buzzing sound at the back of my head, I could feel it in my teeth. Then I answered truthfully without having made the conscious decision or effort to do so.”

Francis frowned a little. “Do you think he was _making_ you answer?”

Theo shook his head. “No, both times it happened he was kinda... apologetic, I guess? Like he had messed up somehow by asking the question in the first place.”

Grace fidgeted with her sleeve cuff. “So if it is Sims doing it, he’s not malicious. He doesn’t mean to.”

“Yeah, he’s been really nice. Considerate about things he can’t possibly know about. I heard he gave Alex Parker an extension on Fleming’s essay without them even asking. Turns out their mum had been sick the last week so they were really behind.”

“There’s also the whole business about your name.” Nadia chimed in.

“Yeah, that was… weird. He said Fleming told him but he was obviously lying.”

Francis finished taking this down. “So, to sum up. He has a variety of scars, doesn’t blink, it feels like he’s watching you even if he’s not. Direct questions from him force you to tell the truth, and he knows things he shouldn’t or couldn’t. Did I miss anything?”

“No, that sounds about right.” The four sat in silence for a moment. 

Grace spoke first. “I can’t think of a single cryptid that explains all of that adequately.”

Nadia agreed. “The impossible knowledge stuff could just be run-of-the-mill creep, but he’s not creepy. He’s just kinda awkward. Nice, but awkward. And that doesn’t explain the question thing.”

The boys couldn’t think of anything either.

Francis sighed. “Well, that was a dead end. Have you guys started your presentations for our 'academic speaking' practice? I’m doing mine on Mothman.”

“That’ll be… something.”

“Listen, if he didn’t want cryptozoology in his class he shouldn’t have said we could present on ‘any topic of personal interest.’”

Grace’s eyes lit up. “What if I did mine on him?” They all looked at her. “What? He’s an interesting topic. How much do you think I can find out about him from Google?” Theo started tapping at his keyboard.

Nadia looked at her in disbelief. Francis looked jealous that he hadn’t thought of the same thing.

Theo looked up from his laptop. “Guys. Come look at this.” They crowded around, and saw the page he was looking at.

“ _Holy shit._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah I know it's not called high school in the UK but consider that I have no fucks left to give
> 
> Acronyms and explanations for non-IB kids:  
> IB - International Baccalaureate. A comprehensive and rigorous two-year curriculum, leading to certificates in individual subjects or a Diploma. The International Baccalaureate provides an international pre-university curriculum and an international university entrance qualification. (that's all bs, the real definition is "hell on earth")
> 
> IO - Individual Oral. A one-on-one conversation between a candidate and their teacher about two selected texts that were read during the program. It's part verbal essay, part exam, and part Q&A. IOs are required for all English classes regardless of level.
> 
> SL - Standard Level. What it says on the tin.
> 
> HL - Higher Level. HL classes are more difficult in that they generally go into more depth and cover more material than their SL counterparts. The only functional difference between SL and HL English is that HL English has an extra required essay. Candidates are required to take three HL classes, or four if they can handle it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grace is a menace who revels in the chaos she creates. Theo does some digging into Mr. Sims's past. Jon has an ethical dilemma.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, i'm American, as you may well have figured out from my vocabulary. i'm also a person of color. i decided to write this universe without explicit racism (or transphobia) because those are not issues i wish to encounter in fiction as well as in my real life. this fic is wish fulfillment in many ways, not only academically.
> 
> people of color deserve stories where the characters that represent us can just be happy, without having to face bigotry - and we deserve a world where we don't have to face it either.
> 
> so! those that do not support BLM are free to click out of this fic now, as i do not want you here! i encourage you to read a book on anti-racism instead. Ibram X. Kendi's 'How to be an Antiracist' is an excellent place to start. bye bye now!
> 
> everyone else, enjoy the new chapter!

_The Mechanisms - Storytelling Musical Cabaret._

There was a moment of stunned silence. 

Then the four of them busted out laughing. Every time it started winding down, one of them would look at the screen or make eye contact with another and set everyone off all over again. Francis had tears in his eyes by the time he could catch his breath enough to speak.

“No. No. Absolutely not. No. This cannot be a thing.”

“It’s a thing all right.” Grace’s eyes were practically glowing with mischief.

Nadia leaned in closer to the screen. “Is that - is that eyeliner?”

Theo zoomed in. “It would appear to be, yes.”

They almost managed to hold it together for a full five seconds before they dissolved into giggles again. 

“How old is this webpage? It looks like my dark edgy Tumblr theme from when I was twelve.”

“Hold on, let me see.” Theo went to the ‘Blog’ page. “Last post was in 2009.”

“Please, God, let there be videos.” 

He opened YouTube in a new tab and searched. About a dozen results came back. Theo set the laptop on the floor a little distance away so everyone could see the screen clearly, and hit play on the first video.

The man in the shaky handheld footage looked alive in a way that none of them had ever seen from Mr. Sims. Without his scars, or the glove, or his graying hair, it was sort of difficult to imagine this twenty-something as the teacher they knew. “..looking for fun! Violence! Adventure! Violence! …. Violence!”

“Are we sure this is the same Jonathan Sims?” Nadia asked. Grace shushed her.

They watched the band go through their set, with minimal interruptions (“Did he just call Oedipus a _motherfucker?_ ” “Hold on a second, this is just Poor Wayfaring Stranger!” “I think that’s the point, Francis.”). When the video cut out, Theo stopped the auto-play and shut the laptop. 

“I think that’s enough life-changing revelations about our English teacher for today.”

“Okay, but that means everything weird about him happened in the last decade. I mean, people change, but not that much.”

“I think you’re underestimating how much can happen in a decade, Nadia.”

“Okay, but we should keep investigating him anyway. At least now we have a time-frame for when all the other shit happened.”

Grace spoke up. “On the bright side, I think I’ve got my presentation topic.” 

\---

Jon rubbed his eyes and let out a deep sigh. It was too early to be alive. Why did people wake up before six anyway? Much better to stay up until three in the morning reading before passing out on the couch like a civilized person. 

Ms. Emery, a fellow English teacher, dropped by to say hello. “Ready for the day?” she asked brightly.

He groaned and lifted his head out of his hands. “No. I don’t understand how you _are_ ready at this hour. It’s only seven thirty, there’s no reason for you to be this happy yet.”

“I brought you coffee, how’s that for happy?”

“Thank you.” He accepted the cup and took a long sip. “I hear your pre-IB classes are having fun today.”

“Oh, yes, we’re simulating trench warfare with upturned tables and paper projectiles.” She leaned in and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’m so sick of All Quiet on the Western Front. Don’t tell the kids.”

Jon laughed. “I’m afraid I’m a bit behind the rest of you. To be honest, I’m still trying to get to know mine. We’ve been doing ‘academic speaking’ presentations for the past few days but really I’m just trying to see what they like.” 

“I think the answer for all of them is ‘weekends with no homework.’ You close to finishing?”

Jon hummed an affirmative and finished his sip of coffee. “We’re down to the last few. Today in my first hour I have,” he shuffled through a few papers until he got to the list, “surnames starting with W through to Z. That’s only what, four kids? Actually no, Anthony went already. Three kids.”

“Not bad for your first week.”

“Thanks. I actually should move my things to the back of the room so I can see the board, so…”

“By all means. See you later, Jon!” Her heels clicked on the hardwood floors as she walked out. 

Jon let out a breath. “Right.” He gathered his things and moved.

\---

“...and that concludes my report on variegation in succulents.”

Jon let a hint of a smile show as he finished grading the presentation. “Thank you Lavender, very good.” He took a glance at his list and felt somewhat relieved to find only one name left. He liked getting to know his students, but they were going to have to get to the actual curriculum at some point. “Grace Zhao?”

Grace stood and gave Nadia a wink before waltzing up to the projector and plugging her laptop in. A bland slide simply titled ‘Presentation’ appeared on the smartboard. “Oh, Lavender, can I have the clicker, please?”

“Oh yeah, ‘course.” She handed it over.

“Thank you.” Grace rolled her shoulders back and settled into a more professional looking posture. “I’ll be doing my presentation on Neo-folk music, using a case study. The band in question is called The Mechanisms-” and on the word ‘Mechanisms’ she clicked to the next slide.

Jon choked on his coffee. He coughed violently a couple of times and looked back at the screen. It was a photo. Of him. In college. His face was blessedly obscured due to the low quality, but he was sure that wouldn’t be the case for long.

Meanwhile, Grace was the picture of innocence. “Is there something wrong, sir?” There was a wicked glint behind her eyes that she tamped down into something resembling simple curiosity. 

Jon made a strangled noise. _This might as well happen._ “No, I’m fine, Grace, carry on.”

She smiled, only a little bit sinister behind the beaming facade. “Great! So the Mechanisms were a band in London active from 2006 to early 2009...”

Jon completely forgot to take notes or grade the presentation, though it was surprisingly thorough in its analysis. Grace never brought up the lead singer’s real name, but there were photos, and one shaky video. Same dark skin and black hair, though it had green streaks back then rather than the current gray. Same dry tone every time he spoke. The students who weren’t zoned out kept glancing back at him, waiting to see his reaction - he thought he was doing an admirable job of keeping a mask of mild interest, until he looked down and noticed he had snapped the pencil he was holding. Finally, Grace wrapped it up and looked back at him.

“Right. Thank you, Grace, great job, that’ll be all.” He moved his things back up to his desk in the front corner of the room, ready to move on, but he could feel the curiosity practically bursting out of his students. He let out a long-suffering sigh.

“I will take questions for the next twenty seconds, starting now.”

They came in a tidal wave. “Holy shit.” “You dyed your hair green?” “Are you secretly famous?” “What’s your favorite song you did?” “Wait, how old are you?” “What’s up with the four different belts in that second picture? That seems excessive.” “What the fuck, sir!” “Why’d you start a band?” “Why’d you _stop_?” “Were those piercings real?”

Jon cut them off like a conductor stopping an orchestra. “Watch your language, yes, no, Pump Shanty, thirty two, I thought it looked cool, _language,_ my college friends roped me into it, we graduated, yes. Moving on now, please.”

Nadia stopped her phone recording and slipped it back into her pocket. She and Grace shared a look, before turning their attention back to the board.

\---

“So.” Nadia tossed her phone and earbuds onto the table. “We should probably discuss the implications of this.”

Francis and Theo each put an earbud in and listened to Mr Sims’s reaction, and the ensuing questions. 

“Bold of him to come at Max and the other girl for swearing, he dropped an F-bomb in nearly a third of the videos we found,” Francis said, setting the phone back down.

“To be fair, this is still an educational environment and technically we’re supposed to be maintaining some semblance of …”

“Elitism?”

“I was going to say sophistication.”

“The song you played was literally about eating the corpses of your dead comrades.”

“That’s different.”

“How the hell is that different?”

“More importantly,” Theo said, “That audio confirms what we already knew, namely that he’s been in the UK for at least the last thirteen to fourteen years, since he’d have to be enrolled in university here long enough to have a college band in the first place.”

Francis agreed. “Also, he’s only thirty two. I definitely would have guessed he was at least forty.”

“Right. So that categorically rules out anything to do with the US government, since he wouldn’t be old enough to be a secret agent or something like that before coming to the UK and putting on that horrendous accent.”

“That sort of implies that he genuinely just talks like that.”

“Eugh. Gross.”

“ _Anyway_ ,” Nadia cut in, “That means we should be focusing on his activities for the last ten years. He seems pretty normal in all the videos we could find, if a little... eccentric. Therefore, I think we can hand-wave anything before 2010 as background, and not supernatural.”

Theo nodded. “That seems reasonable. I don’t have all that much to work on tonight, I’ll do some digging and see what I can find on him.”

\---

_1:17am_

hyacintheo: is anyone still up?

paranadia: Does the day end in a y?

hyacintheo: fair enough

hyacintheo: i think i found some stuff and it’ll be easier for me to just send it than to try and explain it all over lunch

_hyacintheo has sent a link_

_hyacintheo has renamed the chat “mr sims investigators”_

hyacintheo: so i stumbled across this site for a place called the magnus institute? things ancient, hasn’t been updated in months, BUT it has employee records up for grabs if you know where to look

hyacintheo: i couldn’t figure out why it was pinging for mr. sims so i did some archive.org magic and found older versions

_hyacintheo has sent a screenshot_

hyacintheo: that’s from when i went back to 2011. ‘researcher’ is super vague and there’s no photos but whatever. point is that’s the first time mr. sims shows up on the site, and it stays like that until…

_hyacintheo has sent a screenshot_

hyacintheo: 2015. sims disappears from the page of researchers, and reappears on the archive page. i think he got a photo this time because he got promoted to head archivist

hyacintheo: no idea how you get promoted into an entirely different department but. irrelevant for the moment

_hyacintheo has sent a photo_

hyacintheo: what do you notice?

crypkid77: he doesn’t have any scars

paranadia: So he must have gotten them between when that photo was taken and now.

hyacintheo: exactly! that narrows our time frame for suspicious incidents down to just five years, isn’t that exciting? :D

crypkid77: fuck yeah man!!

hyacintheo: !! i’m currently trying to find more recent photos so we can get a timeline going for him but i can’t find any of his social media. i mean, he has none At All

hyacintheo: i’m pretty sure that’s just because he’s old tho

crypkid77: lol probably

paranadia: Come on guys, thirty two is not that old.

crypkid77: he’s twice as old as us

paranadia: He’s a millennial. 

hyacintheo: ....ok thats maybe a little sus then

hyacintheo: like i can understand not having an insta or a twitter but he doesn’t even have facebook 

crypkid77: yeah thats kinda weird ngl

hyacintheo: i’ll keep digging for stuff online but i think it’ll take some detective work to make more significant progress

paranadia: I’m going to get back to work. Make sure you both get some sleep <3

crypkid77: ugh im gonna have to finish this history thing first. ttyl

hyacintheo: bye

_7:34AM_

mothmanlovr: why the fuck were you all awake at 1am

mothmanlovr: stop staying up all night doing homework its bad for your skin

crypkid77: you know what’s also bad for your skin? stress breakouts because your homework isnt done

mothmanlovr: stfu francis

hyacintheo: do you think stalking our english teacher counts as CAS hours?

mothmanlovr: im not even going to dignify that with a response

hyacintheo: technically you just did so…..

mothmanlovr: theodore i swear to god i will kick you

hyacintheo: bet

mothmanlovr: bet yourself motherfucker

_mothmanlovr has removed hyacintheo from the chat_

_paranadia has added hyacintheo to the chat_

mothmanlovr: nadia >:( how dare you

paranadia: Put your phone away before administration confiscates it.

mothmanlovr: fine 

\---

Jon has always thought, and continues to think, that school starts way too early. Currently, he was using his precious seven AM prep time to complain about it to Ms. Emery.

“They’re teenagers, they should be sleeping or something. Getting their rest, growing, et cetera-”

She handed him a styrofoam cup full of shitty breakroom coffee. “Probably, yes.” She sat down across from him. “To be honest, Jon, you probably should be as well.”

He shot her a glare over his coffee, but there was no heat behind it. “I don’t need sleep.”

“When was the last time you slept for more than six hours?” He opened his mouth to answer. “In a row, don’t pull a ‘technically’ on me.” He shut it.

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Don’t lie to me, you totally were.”

He considered the question. “It’s been… a while. I suppose.”

“Any particular reason why?”

_Every time I close my eyes I see the terror of everyone I’ve ever ripped a statement out of and I’m scared I’ll get hungry and compel one of my students to give their fear to the Eye and they’re just kids but they’re all so stressed already and they don’t need their English teacher to force them to relive their trauma every night as well-_

He doesn’t say all of that. Instead he shrugs. “Insomnia.”

“Well, you look like death warmed over.”

“I’ve died before.” He muttered, mostly to himself.

“...Right.”

“I did! I was clinically dead for eighteen minutes. Work incident.”

“Your work… in academia?”

He smiled, completely blasé. “Academics are more vicious than you might think.” He did not elaborate further.

\---

Jon was feeling pretty good about his second class of the day. He had some prompts planned out for reflection, and the younger students weren’t as jaded as the ones in the diploma program. He was still trying to be cautious, though - ever since his slips with Theo, he was trying not to ask direct questions. He really was. But sometimes they just happened. 

Like now.

**“Did you all do the reading I assigned last night?”**

He cringed internally at his own mistake. _There might be a few nos, but that’s alright, I’ll give them time-_

“No,” thirty three voices said in unison.

Well then.

He put on his best ‘disappointed teacher’ face and looked out over the room. “You have twenty minutes to do the reading before we begin the actual lesson, starting now.”

\---

Later, in one of his DP classes, Jon was marking off students for participation.

“Francis Osei, Rose Clair, and Dawson Everett, please stop talking. You’ve maxed out your score for this discussion. If you are not one of those names, and I have not already stopped you, you need points.” He scanned his list, and noted one student who hadn’t talked at all so far. “Katherine.”

She looked up guiltily from her sketchbook. “Yes?”

**“Care to share your thoughts on this?”**

Her eyes glazed over a little. “Personally, I think Ophelia’s suicide was a display of agency. For the acts leading up to this, she was used as a pawn in her father’s plan, her brother talked to her like she wasn’t capable of making decisions about her romantic life on her own, and despite any subtext or hidden intentions, Hamlet still verbally abused her. Her flower scene is the only one where she gets to rage against the people who have used her for the whole play, and she ultimately makes the decision to rebel against that structure of hierarchy in the only way she could see - by removing herself from the equation entirely. She wasn’t mad, and it wasn’t an accident - those were just convenient excuses to deny that she was finally exercising her free will. I think it’s tragic that in what’s technically her final scene, her brother and ex are back to using her as a prop to show each other up - even her one moment of control is taken and used in the schemes of everyone around her.” 

“....Yes. Good. Very insightful. Elliot, you also need some points if you’d like to build on that.”

“Well, Shakespeare’s track record for giving women agency in his plays is a bit spotty…” As Elliot talked, Katherine stared at her hands for a moment, a bit shocked at how well she had articulated her point. Emboldened, she set her sketchbook aside for a moment and flicked across her notes. Just in case.

\---

Katherine stepped quietly into the mostly empty classroom. “Mr. Sims?”

He looked up. “Oh. Hello, Katherine.”

“Just Kat is fine.”

“Alright, Kat. I’ll be sure to remember that in the future.”

“Right. Well. I just wanted to say thanks, I guess.” She looked at her feet and fidgeted with the straps of her backpack. “I’ve never been too good at talking. Especially in front of people. And I don’t know what you did, but whatever it was helped a lot. So thanks.” 

When Mr. Sims didn’t respond, she finally looked back up. He had a funny sort of expression. “Sir?”

He pushed whatever that look was about down and smiled at her. “I’m alright. I’m glad I can help.” 

“Yeah. I gotta go, so.”

“Of course. Goodbye, Kat.”

“Bye, Mr. Sims.”

\---

“That makes three kids who have come to talk to me after class and thanked me for helping them somehow be more articulate.” Jon looked down at Martin. “I don’t know what to do.”

Martin looked back up from his position on Jon’s lap, and closed his book. “Well, the way I see it, you can either double down on not asking any direct questions, which might backfire because your job as a teacher requires you to engage the class, and you might not always be able to format a question into a declaration. Or, you can use the compulsion sparingly, just to help your students out a bit.” He blew a lock of hair out of his face, only for it to fall back into position. “I don’t think using your powers to help people is bad. Especially shy kids, like you’ve said. It sort of seems like they’re grateful for the help.”

Jon smoothed Martin’s hair out of his face. Martin hummed appreciatively. “I know that, I just don’t love the idea of compelling kids when they don’t know what they’re getting into. They _can’t_ know.” He ran his hands through Martin’s hair as he talked. “I think it’s definitely a sticky situation ethically speaking. But then that depends on what school you subscribe to.” He sighed frustratedly, and leaned his head back against the couch. “Utilitarianism implies that since using compulsion in class helps shy students gain confidence and articulate their thoughts clearly in a way they usually struggle to do, it increases utility and I should keep doing it. But from a deontological perspective, I don’t know if the action of compelling them at all is moral in itself. Especially if...” He trailed off.

“What?”

His hand stilled. “If one of them has a statement. And I get hungry.”

“You won’t.”

“Okay, but-”

“Jon, look at me.” He did. “If you did use compulsion, it’s not the kind that killed Peter. It’s just a nudge in the right direction, not forcing them to give a statement, so you won’t give them nightmares or show up in their dreams. You’ve been doing fairly well on written statements for the last few months, so your powers aren’t as intense as usual anyway.” He paused. “You clearly care about these kids a lot. You would never hurt them.”

“I know. But wouldn’t I still be hurting them on some level if I compelled them without them knowing what I’m doing?”

Martin considered this. “What if they did know?”

“Hm?”

“I mean, you obviously can’t tell them the full truth about the Fears and your resultant powers. You could always lie, or be vague. But, to be honest, they seem like smart kids. They probably already know that _something_ is up, you just have to find out if they object.”

Jon paused. “I could do that.” He looked back down. “You’re pretty good at this.”

Martin smiled. “Yes, I am.” He held his book up. “Can I go back to my Keats now?”

“Of course.” Jon reached for one of Martin’s hands and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. “I love you.”

“I love you too. I do need my hand back though.”

“As you wish.”

\---

The next day, Jon passed out slips of paper. “I am aware that some students find the method of questioning I sometimes use in discussions and direct engagement helpful for getting over the mental hurdle that public speaking presents. I would like to know if any of you mind me using this method, as needed. This survey is anonymous, so please don’t hold back for my sake.”

He looked over the slips at the end of the day. 

No objections whatsoever. He huffed a laugh to the empty classroom.

“Alright then.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all of my main characters are people of color and half of them are trans because i'm just that powerful. also yes, I did just make you read 200 words of my opinions on Hamlet as well as a whole in-universe conversation on moral philosophy. what are you going to do about it 
> 
> i'm really glad that you guys are enjoying this story! i'm hoping that from here on out i'll be able to update this on a weekly-ish basis, but i can't promise that it will be at all consistent. despite summer break, i am still effectively a student, and i still have to keep up with IB things even if school isn't in session. thanks for reading!
> 
> Definition(s) for non-IB kids:  
> CAS: Creativity, Activity, and Service. It's mandatory volunteering with extra steps to make you well rounded. You have to complete about 150 hours by the end of the program, with a decently balanced mix of the three strands, as well as a CAS project in order to get your diploma.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaded upperclassmen dunk on Agamemnon, Elektra, the entire Trojan war, and Freud in rapid succession for a full page and a half. Jon forgets his bag. Theo makes bad decisions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for mentions of sexual assault in the context of a discussion about Ancient Greek literature, and other related violence and gross shit that happened in Hellenistic mythology. Oedipus is briefly relevant, because, you know. If you want to skip all that, just jump to "On that note," and go from there.

If you asked the students of Jon’s third hour class how they got from Hamlet to Agamemnon, they couldn’t tell you.

“Clytemnestra was right all along - who _does that_? He had it coming.” 

To be honest, neither could Jon. He took a sip of his tea and watched the class as they worked themselves into a furor of righteous indignation.

“It’s so extraordinarily messed up that it was okay for Agamemnon to kill Iphigenia, and for Orestes to kill Clytemnestra, but not for Clytemnestra to kill Agamemnon. Double standard much?”

Francis snorted. “It’s almost like ancient Greek society hated women or something.” 

A girl in the back piped up. “Also, Helen of Troy did nothing wrong. All she did was, like, be pretty, and it’s not her fault that men are trash.” A few boys started grumbling at that, but she cut them off with a glare. “Everyone blames her for the Trojan war, when all she did was mind her own business. The deaths that happened around her were entirely the fault of the men fighting over her, but somehow she’s the guilty one here?”

“Oh, we completely forgot to get his ass about Cassandra.”

“Please don’t swear, Sebastian.”

“Sorry, Mr. Sims. I’m right though. She was just vibing - I mean, she was fifteen and spouting off prophecies no one believed but she didn’t _do_ anything. And then Agamemnon decided that he had the right to kidnap her for, you know, gross reasons, and then Clytemnestra killed her for that, which was sort of messed up because, again, none of that was her fault! Clytemnestra cheats on Agamemnon with - with what’s-his-face, and that makes her this horrible person, but Agamemnon cheats on her with Cassandra, who didn’t even consent, and that’s just fine, apparently.”

“I want to like Elektra, but she has the kind of internalized misogyny that you can only get by being a fictional woman written by a man who hates women.” There were murmurs of agreement.

Francis looked thoughtful for a moment. “You know, I think Elektra and Hamlet are basically the same character right up until the point in the plot where he dies and she doesn’t.” The class turned to face him. “I mean, prove me wrong. She grieves her father for way too long, blames her mother for remarrying after her father’s death, avenges her father’s murder, almost got put to death that one time, and references Niobe in her grief scene, which are all oddly specific parallels. Also, Freud apparently thought that both were subject to an Oedipal reading.”

“Yeah, is it just me or is it really messed up that the feminine version of an Oedipus complex is called an Elektra complex? Like, Elektra was sad when her dad died, and Oedipus accidentally screwed his mum. Those are not the same.”

“Exactly! Elektra might have a not like other girls complex so big you can see it from space, but she just didn’t want to get married after her dad was violently murdered, even though he had it coming. That’s absolutely not weird, that’s a mostly valid response to trauma, you know, except for the part where she killed people, that was a little messed up.”

“I mean, technically there was some, uh- Oedipal conduct in that family, but it happened generations before Elektra and it wasn’t consensual to boot. The point is, basically everyone in Greek mythology who screwed their parents didn’t want to or mean to.”

“I want to punch Sigmund Freud.”

“I can and will learn necromancy and reanimate him so I can kill him again.” The bell rang.

“On that note,” Jon said, as everyone started packing up, “please make sure to read and annotate the handout on the new unit over the weekend. I won’t be grading you on it, but you should be able to talk about Garcia-Marquez and his life. Off you go.”

Francis picked up his bag and started walking quickly, trying not to be late to his chemistry class on the other side of campus. When he got there, Ms. V was sitting at her desk, marking up assignments. She looked up briefly as he came to stand in front of her.

“Hey, Francis!”

“Hi, Ms. V. Can I talk to you for a second?”

“I’m behind on marking, so you’ll have to be quick. How can I help?”

“Can I borrow a Buchner flask? The funnel too, ideally.”

She looked up from her grading suspiciously. “Dare I ask why?”

“My set up at home doesn’t have that stuff, and I want to do an experiment that needs it.”

“Well, if it’s for a school thing, you can send a bit of paperwork to the main office just saying that you’re borrowing it, you’ll replace it if it gets broken, all of that.”

“‘Course.”

She shuffled around in her desk for a moment before producing a sheet of paper, setting it in front of him. “Just fill this out, bring it to the main office to get approved, and bring it back. Then I can let you bring the equipment home, but you have to _promise_ you’ll be careful.”

“Yes, Ms. V. I promise.”

Later, Francis removed the glassware from the scrap paper it had been wrapped in for the trip home, and set it on a recently-cleared table. He brushed a spare bit of red thread off the corner, took a step back and gazed at the mismatched collection of equipment.

An Erlenmeyer flask, plus a stopper. A vacuum hand pump. Some plastic tubing. The Buchner flask and funnel. And about a pound of fine ground coffee.

“Alright then.”

And he started his experiment.

The next night, Francis put together the filtering flask and lined the Buchner funnel. He opened his fridge and pulled out the Erlenmeyer flask, filled with cold water and coffee. 

He poured a bit of the sludge into the funnel and drew a vacuum. Then again. And again.

After everything had been filtered, he dumped some fresh grounds back into the Erlenmeyer flask, poured in the cold coffee, and put it back in the fridge.

\---

It was just a normal Monday. Nothing special about it. Jon walked into his classroom, coffee in hand, and took a deep breath. He reached for his bag to-

His hand met empty air. 

“Shit.” He knew exactly where it was even without Beholding’s help - in the cabin, next to the door. Deliberately placed in his line of vision so he wouldn’t forget it, for all the good that did.

There wasn’t time to go back and get it. It would take half an hour just to get home, and by then school would have already started and then there would be two dozen unsupervised, stressed-out teenagers in a room together and who knows how much academic dishonesty could happen in an environment like that. He’d just have to stick around, lesson plans or no, and wing it.

He had found a TED Talk on magical realism by the time students had started to trickle in, and was still debating the merits of a general study hall versus going around the room having people read out loud when the bell rang. He sighed, and stepped in front of the board.

“Alright. Today we’re starting our unit on Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s short stories. I trust that you’ve all looked over the handout on his life that I gave you on Friday, but in case you’ve conveniently lost it, spares are in the assignment tray as always. I had intended to give you copies of The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World to annotate, but I think I’ll have to leave that off for now. Instead, we’re going to get some more background on the specifics of the genre.”

He sat at his desk and let the video play as he started trying to plan the rest of his classes. He could roll with the TED Talk plan for third and fourth hour, and after that there was a half hour gap where everyone was gone for lunch. He could plan more then, and if second hour- 

He was pulled out of his reverie by a knock at the door. He looked up to see Martin, standing in the door frame in front of his desk.

The side of Martin’s mouth crooked up in a half smile. “Forget something?” he said, holding Jon’s bag up by the strap.

“My hero.” He reached up to take it, glancing at his students as he did so. Very few seemed totally invested in the video, most of them looking up from their notes every so often to watch Martin with a sort of detached curiosity. He kept his voice down. “I assume you’re off to class then.”

“Yes. Wish me luck, I’ve got Birde today.”

“The lecturer from hell?”

“That’s the one.”

Jon smiled. “Good luck. Thank you for bringing my bag.”

“It’s no problem. Do you want me to grab some takeaway for dinner on my way home? I was thinking Chinese.”

“Sounds good. Just text me if you need my order or anything.”

“Alright, I’ll be off then. Love you.”

“I love you too.” He gave a little wave as Martin turned to leave, and felt a burst of warmth in his chest when he saw Martin smile softly at the gesture. He hung onto the feeling as the speaker wrapped up, and the video ended. 

“Alright everyone, good news, I have your copies now. Bad news, you have to do some actual work today instead of a study hall,” he said, walking around the room to pass them out. 

“Mr. Sims, who was that?” someone asked.

He didn’t hesitate. “My husband.” Just one more thing to fudge on the CV, if he was being honest.

“Oh.” A pause. “So is he Mr. Sims as well?”

He smiled a little at that. “No, we kept our own names. Now, I’ll be giving you all about fifteen minutes to read and annotate, maybe more if we get to the end of it and most people aren’t finished yet.” He finished distributing the copies and went to the whiteboard, grabbing a marker off the ledge. “Please be on the lookout for,” he wrote as he spoke, “places where the magical realism is most apparent, any specific author choices that really stand out to you, and connections you can make between this story and our background knowledge of Garcia-Marquez and his focus on isolation versus relationships. We’ll reconvene at 8:35 and do a progress check.” He stopped writing and checked that his scrawl was mostly legible, before turning back to the class and capping the marker. “Alright, get to it.”

As everyone started rummaging in their bags for pens and highlighters, Jon settled back at his desk, smiling to himself. 

_mothmanlovr has renamed the chat “sims investigaytors”_

mothmanlovr: i knew i liked him for a reason

hyacintheo: ? did something happen

paranadia: His husband came into class to give him a bag he’d left at home.

hyacintheo: damn… gay rights

_Liked by mothmanlovr, paranadia, and crypkid77_

\---

When Francis got home, he ran the coffee through the vacuum set up once more. He divided it up into four smaller bottles and set them back in the fridge.

\---

“I have the IB student’s holy grail.”

“Oh?” Grace raised an eyebrow skeptically. 

“I’m not kidding.” He pulled out the bottles of coffee and passed them out to the rest of the group. “This is triple cold-brewed, vacuum filtered black coffee. Half an ounce has a bit more caffeine than a cup of the coffee you’d get out of a regular machine.” 

Nadia held hers up to the light. It was remarkably opaque. “Damn.”

“Francis?” Theo said worriedly.

“Yes?”

“I just put a little bit of this into my water bottle and it’s, uh. It doesn’t look like it’s diluting, like, at all? I mean, it’s still completely black.”

“Yes, that’s the idea. How much did you put in?”

“I don’t know, an ounce? Maybe?”

“And your water bottle was pretty full, right? So now you have about two cups of regular coffee in there.” Theo did not look particularly relieved by this.

Grace laughed. “This is way too much power for one person to hold.”

“Yeah, that’s why I split it up between the four of us. Oh, don’t drink more than two ounces a day, yeah? It’ll keep for a while yet anyway, so don’t go drinking it all within a week or two.”

\---

Theo knew he shouldn’t drink the super-coffee that Francis made. Especially not this late. Especially not as much as he had poured into his glass.

But he’d just had a week and a half of incredibly inconvenient scheduling at work, and he had a backlog of essays and assignments and mathematical tedium to get through before the due dates hit. Tomorrow.

He tossed the glass back, grimaced at the bitterness, and started hacking away at the pile of homework.

\---

Theo was the most tired he had ever been in his life, but he just _could not stop moving._

Time wasn’t flowing correctly, being simultaneously too slow and too fast. His leg bounced incessantly, and he clicked his pen rapidly in the gaps between his note-taking. At some point, the lecture segued into written reflection. His handwriting was even more terrible than usual, the pen shaking slightly as he tried to get his thoughts down onto the page.

“Theo? Can I speak to you in the hall, please?”

There was a small chorus of ‘ooooh’s from the other students, which Mr. Sims pointedly ignored. Theo ran through the past few days in his head for anything he’d done he could possibly be in trouble for as he walked into the hallway. Sims shut the door behind them, before pulling two spare chairs away from the wall so they faced each other.

“Sit.” He took one, and Theo took the chair opposite. He focused on one of the small, circular scars on his cheek, rather than make eye contact.

Regardless, he felt pinned by his teacher’s unblinking gaze. “Theo,” he said, **“How much sleep did you get last night?”**

He answered immediately. “I didn’t.”

“You didn’t sleep at all.”

“No.”

**“Why not?”**

“I had to catch up on homework. Francis made us this super strong coffee, so I used that to power through it, and after that I couldn’t fall asleep. I’m alright, though, I don’t really need it.”

“Yes, you do _._ ”

He shook his head. “I appreciate the concern, Mr. Sims, but I’m okay. Honest.”

“You’ve been distracted and remarkably fidgety all hour. You seemed a little dizzy when you stood to follow me out here, and, perhaps most alarmingly, you’re _twitching_. Those are all textbook signs of mild to moderate caffeine overdose.”

“It wasn’t that much.”

“Don’t lie to me, Theo. **Exactly how much caffeine was in that coffee?** ”

“Seven hundred milligrams. Give or take.”

“Seven hundred-” He took off his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose and let out a deep, frustrated sigh. “You kids are going to be the death of me.” 

“Sorry.”

“The maximum safe dose for a healthy adult is four hundred milligrams.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Adolescents should cap their intake at one hundred milligrams.”

“I know, Mr. Sims.”

“So **_why_ ** _-_ ” the air seemed to slightly crackle around them, **“would you do something so** **_monumentally_ ** **stupid?”**

Theo thought it seemed pretty obvious. “I had homework.”

“You _had homework_.”

“Well, yeah. I work evenings at the Red Lion, that’s the pub down in the village, and Olivia’s not been well for the last week or so, so I’ve been picking up her shifts, and after school and work and the walk home, it’s usually already past ten and I’m exhausted and I just - I fell behind. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.”

“Sorr- right. Yes, sir.”

“ **Why** \- hm. No. I would _like to know_ why you didn’t talk to me and your other teachers about this. We would have given you extensions.”

Theo knew he was being given an out. He told the truth anyways. “I shouldn’t have needed the help. If I were a better student, if I had just stayed up later on the other days, if I worked just a bit harder for just a bit longer, I’d have the work done. It’s not your fault that I let it pile up until the day before it was all due. That’s on me. So it wouldn’t really be fair of me to ask for help when I don’t deserve it, would it?”

Sims didn’t answer. Theo looked back up at him to see him worrying at the inside of his lip with his teeth. Considering. “Would it?”

He fixed him again with his stare. “Theo, I’m going to tell you something that I wish someone had told me when I was about your age.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“There is a tendency, especially in IB culture, to romanticize unhealthy studying habits. But you can’t live off of coffee, as fun as it might be to joke about it. You’re still growing. You need sleep. You need real food. Productivity is not the end all be all of life. Your grades, and I really should not be telling you this, are not what’s important. _You_ are important. If you are pushing yourself to your absolute limit, to the point of consuming unsafe levels of caffeine and not sleeping in order to maintain your grades, that is not a failure on your part. It’s a failure on mine. Of course you deserve help, that’s why I’m here. That’s why all of us are here, because we _want_ to help you. All you have to do is ask.”

“I know,” Theo said in a small voice. “It’s just hard. To ask, I mean.”

“Yes, it is. I owe you an apology, because I should have noticed you were struggling earlier. But you _have_ to learn to ask for help, and to accept it when it’s offered.”

Theo nodded. “I understand.”

“Good. I’ll give you a three day extension on your late work if you promise to ask your other teachers for something similar. You can head inside."

"Okay." He made as if to stand.

"Theo."

"Yes?" he said, a look of vague apprehension in his eyes.

"Do _not_ pull a stunt like this again.”

“Yes, Mr. Sims.” And with that he fled back into the classroom.

Jon sighed. Martin was going to love this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jon's being a hypocrite about the coffee thing but it's because he cares about his students and if i want to project the conversation that i wish i could have with my teachers about productivity culture onto him and Theo then that is between me and my unhealthy relationship with work. there is absolutely no investigation plot in this but i promise i'll get into it next chapter! and no, i'm not going to stop making you all read my literature hot takes.
> 
> Francis uses @systlin on tumblr's method of making "Event Horizon," which i have not yet attempted to make but dear God am i close. i used [this post](https://systlin.tumblr.com/post/133923713705/oh-god-how-do-you-do-the-triple-distilled-coffee) as a reference.
> 
> (also jsyk i probably won't be replying to as many comments from here on out but i see them and i appreciate them! thank you so much!! :D )


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon and Martin try to enjoy their winter break. The gang goes cryptid hunting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I'm a week and a half late, I got sidetracked by a different project. In my defense it is a really cool premise though, I was listening to 174 again and I realized that theater of the absurd would actually be a brilliant medium for existential horror and I maybe got carried away and also I did say _roughly_ weekly. Unfortunately, I'll probably be vanishing for a few weeks after this as well because I'm taking some online classes, so I likely won't have time to write. The next chapter probably won't be up until early August, at a guess, but I promise I'll have it written before school actually starts for me. Anyway. Enjoy the new chapter!
> 
> CW for alcohol consumption, but you can skip to "'Come on!' Grace called," to avoid it

"Now, an interesting point you could make here if you wanted is-"

The instant the bell rang, Jon's voice was drowned out by the shuffling of a class excitedly packing their bags in an effort to get out of the school as quickly as possible.

"I know the winter holiday is fun, but be responsible over the break, if you please," he said, speaking louder to be heard over the din. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

A girl towards the front of the room piped up as she shoved her papers into her backpack. "Do you have any holiday plans, Mr. Sims?"

"Stay home. Enjoy two weeks without you little menaces." He said, leaning back against his desk. "Read things that aren't for class."

"That sounds extraordinarily boring, sir. With all due respect."

"Thank you for your input. Your concern is noted."

As the last few students left the classroom, chattering to their friends about their plans for the break, Jon pulled out his phone and started typing.

_To: Martin <3_

I know we already have wine at home but should I get something stronger on my way back

are you still at the school??

Yes, why

jon. talking about alcohol on school grounds. for shame :/

So, you're saying I shouldn't stop by an off-license to stock up?

.... get scotch

That's what I thought

\---

"Alright," Nadia said, setting a notebook down on Grace's floor. "We have two weeks of no classes, no homework, and more free time than we've had in months. Let's go cryptid hunting."

"It would be nice to go outside for once," Francis mused, idly petting one of Grace's cats. She jumped into his lap and purred, immediately covering his dark sweater with fur.

Theo groaned. "God, I miss the sun. It'll have to be after Christmas though, my family has plans."

Grace nodded. "Mine too. We can meet up on the twenty-seventh or so? Look for cryptids, come back here, get some cider? Francis, I'd lean back if I were you, Marshmallow is looking very interested in your face right now."

He tried, bracing himself by his elbows as the cat followed his movements until he was flat against the floor, scrunching up his nose as Marshmallow started licking it. He sighed, resigned to his fate. "Peanut Butter would never do this to me," he told the fluffy mass on his chest.

"PB would absolutely do that to you, she just doesn't like human boys."

"What about cat boys?"

"What about them?"

"I mean, boy cats. Cats who are boys."

"Oh, we don't know. I don't know if she's ever met one."

He grumbled. "This is misandry. Absolutely despicable."

Nadia gasped dramatically. "You take that back, Grace's cats are a _delight_."

Grace shrugged. "No, he's right, they're wee bastards but we love 'em."

"And rightly so, they're lovely!"

The affectionate bickering continued into the night, as the four of them let themselves relax for the first time in months.

\---

"What do you mean you don't like theater?" Jon asked incredulously, only slurring his words a little bit.

Martin was flushed, though that may have been the alcohol. "I don't know, I just find it really awkward to sit in theater and watch people act. It feels fake."

"You go to movies all the time, and it's the exact same thing."

He gestured vaguely. "Yeah but that's like. Movie universe. It's different when they're in the same room as you."

"If you just knew all the work that goes into it-"

"No, no, I get it's a whole thing to put on plays, but-"

"I mean, what- what don't you like about it? Specifically? There's productions out there for every genre and style, you can't just generalize that you don't like them at _all._ "

"I'm not generalizing."

"You definitely are. It's like if I said that I hate all poetry."

"You literally do, though."

"I," Jon fumbled, "I like some of it."

"That's a lie and we both know it, you once told me it was superfluous."

"I've come around to- I don't _hate_ all of it."

"Oh, do tell. What changed?"

Jon flushed and retreated into the sweater he'd stolen from Martin, pulling the sleeves over his hands. "That's not important. My point is-"

"Was it me?" Martin asked jokingly. Jon looked away. "Oh my god."

"Shut up."

"That's very sweet, really."

Jon shrank into his sweater even more. "Yeah, yeah. My point is that you can't just dismiss all theater like that, that's not how it works."

"I can just _read_ the plays for the literary merit."

" _Reading_ the plays is not the point. That's the magic of theater."

"Christ, that's cheesy."

Jon ignored him. "The performance is different every time, with variations between companies and actors and even from day to day. Live theater is brilliant like that, because the choices are different every time that they are made, in spite of how consistent the actual text is. And that's not even considering the crew-"

"Jon, were you a theater kid?" Jon stopped halfway through his sentence, mouth still open as he looked at Martin. "Oh, my god, you were."

"I," Jon paused, choosing his words carefully. "May have done AmDram. At one point in time."

"Did you do Shakespeare? Were you Hamlet? Is that why you have so many opinions on him," Martin said, leaning towards him. He pushed himself off the couch where they were sitting, holding his hand out dramatically and gazing at it. He raised his chin imperiously. "To be, or not to be, that is the question."

"Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them." Jon finished, reaching to refill his glass of wine. "To die- to sleep, no more, and by a sleep to say we end the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to." He paused, brow furrowing as he tried to focus on the words. "To die, to sleep- to sleep, perchance to dream, aye, there's the rub, for in that sleep of death, what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause. For who would bear the... the something, something, but that the dread of something..." He trailed off. "I can't remember the rest. Also, he's not holding a skull in that scene, if that's what you're miming. Yorick doesn't show up until act five, you know, 'alas, poor Yorick, I knew him, Horatio' and all of that."

"I knew it. I can't believe I married a theater nerd. And a _Shakespeare_ nerd at that."

"The verse is great! Iambic pentameter is a heartbeat - to _be_ or _not_ to _be,_ that _is_ the _ques_ tion. It's part of what makes Shakespeare great, and why some actors will hit their chests when they perform his works. It's _in your body_ , in the most basic building block of the human soul."

"Dork. Did you use Beholding for that monologue? I don't know which answer I want to hear less."

"If I used my Eldritch Google powers to remember the most famous soliloquy in the past four hundred years, I would have gotten through the whole thing. And don't get at me for Shakespeare, which one of us got caught crying over sonnet seventy-one?"

"It's a brilliant sonnet and you know it! He decided that he'd rather be forgotten than make his loved ones sad by dying, it's sweet. Especially in historical context."

"I'm not a poetry person, Martin."

"No, you can just recite soliloquies from memory and get excited about the syllabic stress. Totally different and not at all the same."

"Glad you see it my way."

"Wait, Jon, that's not what I meant-"

A bottle of wine and a not insignificant amount of scotch later, the conversation had turned away from literature as Jon insisted he was on vacation, and so was exempt from work-adjacent conversation. At least, that was the idea.

"No, no, there's areas of knowledge and ways of knowing." Jon said, swirling his glass and watching the wine whirl for a moment. His head felt foggy, like he was thinking through gloves. "You gotta get the knowledge out of the WOK, so you can know things about the AOK. Yeah?"

"Okay, but can you just _Know_ things and have that be, like, a valid thing? I'm pretty sure 'monsters' aren't covered as a thing you can know about."

"I mean, no. 'Monsters' is probably... human sciences? Ironically enough. Since it deals with people's fears and the actions they take out of fear. But the archives might have been history, I don't know."

"My point- my point is, what are all the ways you can know things about things? And how you know for sure that you know the things about the things."

"Uh, language, sense perception, emotion, reason, imagination, intuition, memory, and faith."

"'Eldritch power' is not one of those. Therefore, the Knowing you get from the Beholding isn't a source."

"It is too."

"Is not. What would it fall under?"

"You don't have to just have one way of knowing, they _combine_ , Martin."

"Okay, top three."

Jon blew out a breath and leaned his head back against the sofa. "Intuition, faith, sense perception."

"You don't use your senses for the perception, though."

"Alright, fine, but the intuition still works. It's just not mine going. And the faith part, I guess, but not in the traditional TOK sense. I just know."

" _Just knowing_ completely defeats the purpose of the ways of knowing though, because it's not communicating if you're just getting knowledge dropped in your brain."

"Why not?"

"It just isn't."

"Okay, but why?"

"...God, you're impossible."

"I know."

Martin groaned and dropped his head into his hands.

\---  
  


“Come on!” Grace called, ponytail bouncing as she turned to face her friends, all three of them breathing heavily. “We haven’t even gotten past the road into the really deep woods yet. It’s gonna get dark out pretty soon, and then what?”

Francis huffed. “Cryptids usually come out in the dark. You ever heard of an English lion encounter in the daylight? No.”

“The point of this little escapade isn’t to find a cryptid, Francis. It’s to get better at field work so we can find cryptids later on. And, you know, so I can get inspiration for my ESS IA.”

“Ha, I forgot you take ESS. Weak.”

“Bold words, Mr. ‘I’m a massive nerd who takes double HL sciences instead of taking an elective like a normal person.’ Remind me who has the higher GPA again?”

“That’s not fair, art is basically an automatic A.”

“Um, first of all, not true, and second of all, you didn’t answer the question.”

He sighed. “You do.”

“And that’s on strategic enrollment.”

“At least I challenge myself.” Francis ducked to avoid a low hanging branch as the group got closer to the road separating the somewhat tamed woods from the wilderness.

“Challenging yourself is for wimps.”

“Universities like to see academic rigor!”

“All of IB is academic rigor. The diploma is pass-fail, who cares what classes you take?”

“Me. HL exams scores count for college credit.”

“Listen, if I have to spend my fleeting youth at that hellhole of a school, I’m at least going to have fun.”

“Both of you shut up a second.” Nadia stopped and held up a hand as she caught her breath, peering out across the gravel road at the forest on the other side as she did. The others followed her gaze, argument forgotten. “Has that cottage always been there?”

It was a bit of a ways off, across a bit of meadow on each side of the road. It was small and squat, made from old looking bricks and slightly crumbling mortar. A light shone in the window, and smoke drifted out of the chimney.

Theo shrugged. “Must have been. We’re way over on the other side of our woods by now, it’s not that weird we haven’t come across it.”

Grace looked doubtful. “No, we must have seen it before. I didn’t think anyone actually lived there, though.”

“Well, we haven’t been this far out since, what, last spring? The side out behind that one beekeeper’s place has more wildlife anyway.” As he said this, a shadow fell across the front window. “Someone’s home.”

“Obviously someone’s home, dumbass, who leaves a fire going unattended? Haven’t you ever gone camping? That’s fire safety one-oh-one right there.”

“Shut up. I know for a fact that you leave candles burning all the time.”

“Candles are different.”

“Are not.”

“Are too.”

"Definitely are not."

The bickering stopped as they watched the cottage door swing open, revealing a figure standing in the doorway, still talking to someone inside.

Nadia squinted. “Hold on.” She shuffled in her bag for a pair of binoculars and held them up to her eyes. “Oh shit, Grace, take a look.”

She did, fumbling with the focus. “Is that-”

“I think so. I mean, I’m pretty sure.”

“So that means-”

“Yeah.”

Francis cleared his throat pointedly. “Do either of you want to fill us in on what’s happening?”

“Here.” Grace held out her binoculars for him to take, while Nadia handed hers to Theo. “You won’t know him, since you’re not in first hour, but that,” she gestured at the person in the distance, “is Mr. Sims’s husband.”

“Oh.” Francis lowered the binoculars. They were all quiet for a moment. “You’re telling me we went out looking for cryptids and we found our weird-as-fuck English teacher?”

“Is there really a difference?”

“Yeah, fair enough.”

A twig snapped, and Theo whipped his head up to see Nadia creeping along the forest edge. “What the hell are you doing?” he hissed.

“Shh,” she said, still moving. “I’m trying to see if there’s a window on the side with the shades up or something.”

“What? No, Nadia, stop.” She did, looking back at him with a puzzled look on her face. “You can’t possibly be suggesting that we actively spy on him.”

“Why not?”

He sputtered. “Because it’s weird! Theorizing about him is one thing, looking through his windows is another. It’s crossing a line.”

“Like he hasn’t crossed a million lines already.” Theo stopped dead in his tracks and just stared at her. She crossed her arms as she said, “Don’t look at me like that. You know it’s true.” His brow furrowed, and he started to reply when he was interrupted.

“Maybe,” Francis said, stepping between the two of them, “both of you could chill for a second, and Nadia can explain what she means.”

Nadia frowned frustratedly. "I'm just saying, a lot of times it seems like he knows almost everything about us. He knows our families, and nicknames, and he remembers everything we ever tell him - and that's fine most of the time, I don't mind all that much, but we don't know anything about him in return." She listed the items off on her fingers as she talked. "We know he studied at Oxford, worked at a paranormal institute in London, moved here sometime last fall, and he has a husband. A husband, I'll point out, whose name we still don't know, despite him literally coming into class that one time. It's not fair. I'm all for professional boundaries, but spookily knowing stuff about us, intentionally or otherwise, kinda crossed that a while back."

"Yeah, sure, he's definitely some flavor of supernatural, but that doesn't mean we can spy on his house," Theo interjected.

"This is just a matter of balancing the scales. Yes, as a student body, we've basically all agreed there's something off about him, but we're the only ones who take that really seriously instead of thinking it's some kind of a weird running joke. And don't you all want to know for sure? Whatever weird underworld he crawled out of, it's everything we've been trying to prove since we were kids. It's everything we've researched and tracked, and I'm not going to pass up the chance to find out the truth about the world. Okay?"

Theo paused, considering. "I get where you're coming from. I do. But it's kind of creepy, isn't it?"

"It was also kind of creepy of us to track down his education records and employment history but you didn't have a problem with that."

"Internet stalking is different! We could actually get caught this time."

"That's a risk I'm willing to take. I have to know." She wheeled on Francis. "Don't you want some empirical evidence for cryptozoology? All of our theories and monsters could be real to some extent, and we can prove it, we just have to do a few unscrupulous things to get there."

He paused, a pained look on his face. "I think you might be right," he said carefully.

The four of them looked to each other, the seconds stretching out as they waited for someone else to make a move. Finally, Nadia broke the silence. "Let's put it to a vote. All in favor of snooping, say aye. Aye."

Francis followed suit. "Aye."

"Nay." Theo looked at Grace, who was flicking her eyes between him and the other two. "Aye," she said cautiously. "Sorry, Theo. If something weird happens out here near the woods, we won't be able to find that out on the Internet."

He sighed. "Alright. But if we get found out, this wasn't my idea. In fact, if we get caught, I've never met any of you in my life."

"Fair enough." And they walked down the edge of the forest in pursuit of a better view.

\---

Jon hummed as he stood over the cutting board, dispatching vegetables with quick knife work. Occasionally, Martin could hear snatches of lyrics in his half-singing.

"I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream..."

Martin set his book to the side, leaned back in his seat and listened.

"I know you, that look in your eyes is so familiar a gleam..."

He smiled. "Your voice is nice," he said, calling softly through the open doorway.

Jon stopped singing abruptly. "Oh. Thank you." The smile in his voice was obvious, though his back was turned. He seemed about to start again when he stopped in his tracks, shoulders tensing.

Martin sat up. "What's wrong?"

"We're being watched."

"Shit." Martin got up from the couch, crossing to the kitchen. "Is it Elias? Do we need to leave?"

"I don't know. I don't think so." Jon's eyes flicked about the room, checking for the sudden appearance of a tape recorder.

"Can you check?"

"Right, yes." Jon shut his eyes, and Martin watched as hundreds of glowing eyes briefly flashed in the air around them as Jon pushed the limits of his Knowing out past the confines of the cabin. He relaxed as he opened his eyes, blinking away the green luminescence.

"Can you shut the blinds?"

Martin did, looking back at him with a puzzled look. "Is the Eye really that put off by some curtains?"

Jon shook his head, returning to his chopping. "Not the Eye. Just some kids."

"Students of yours?"

He blew out an exasperated breath. "Yup," He said, popping the p. "Exactly the ones I'd expect, too."

"You mean, the ones who aren't falling for your bullshit."

"Yes. It's very impolite of them, I must say."

"You just have to get better at lying, you're a horrible scammer as it stands." He walked up behind Jon and put his arms around his waist, resting his head on his shoulder. "I could give you lessons."

Jon huffed, holding the bladed edge away from the two of them. "I'm holding a knife, Martin, you can't just go up behind someone with a knife and," he stopped as Martin took it from his hand and set it down on the counter, gently turning Jon to face him. "Hello."

Martin smiled. "Hi." He pressed a quick kiss to his forehead. "You really should talk some sense into those kids though. Aside from it being way too dangerous, I would like to have a nice night in with my husband without being spied on."

Jon shrugged, shuffling his way out of Martin's reach and taking the knife and cutting board with him. "I'll let them have their fun. It took us years to figure out the Entities, and we had access to all the statements, in addition to some highly illegally-obtained government documents. What could they possibly figure out from some good old-fashioned snooping?"

\---

A little ways away, the students watched as the cottage windows glowed green for a fleeting instant. Grace dropped her binoculars, a lens cracking as it hit the ground. Francis lowered his with shaking hands as he started taking slow steps backwards into the dark woods behind him.

Nadia looked at Grace. "What the hell was that?" she asked, stepping forward to pick up the binoculars. Theo looked between the three of them, puzzlement on his face.

Grace's jaw worked as she opened and closed her mouth, struggling to find the words. Francis answered for her, still staring at the cottage.

"I think we should all probably be going home now."  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I did have a Hamlet phase, and yes, it was exactly as both embarrassing and important to my development as an alt kid as the three months of eighth grade that I spent listening to nothing but MCR. Pity I can't remember the "to be or not to be" speech anymore, I checked what I wrote from memory against the text and I barely got through two lines before i started making mistakes. Jon is tipsy, though, so at least it's in character for him.
> 
> When I was writing the conversation between Jon and Martin about getting liquor I realized about halfway through my second edit that I was using really specific regional slang, and British people definitely wouldn't use Detroit vocabulary, so I fell into a research hole on English dialects and their terms for hello Jon, apologies for the deception, but I wanted to make sure you started reading so I thought
> 
> Definitions  
> ESS: Environmental Systems and Societies. It's what you take when you don't really want to go into science as a career. You go camping and talk about the environment and do fun stuff while everyone taking the hard science classes slowly loses the will to live.
> 
> IA: Internal Assessment. It's a big project you have to do for every class. They're important for the diploma but no one's actually ever explained to me why? I think they go towards your point total or something like that. 
> 
> (I've defined it before but like. TOK can honestly be boiled down to "How do you know that you know what you know about the things that you think you know that you know about?" and I hate it. Everyone bullshits it. It is fun with a good teacher tho ngl)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon has a terrible day. The gang continues to investigate Mr. Sims. Compulsion begins to have unintended consequences.

_Dec 27, 9:02_

paranadia: So do either of you want to explain what was so fucked up we had to leave immediately and split up to boot?

crypkid77: i mean

crypkid77: no

crypkid77: but the whole reason we went was to get more information so if we don't talk about its probably a waste

mothmanlovr: yeah it was rough

mothmanlovr: but we should talk about it. francis do u wanna go first or should i?

crpykid77: you go, i'm doing dishes rn so i can't type out the whole thing

mothmanlovr: ok

mothmanlovr: there's no way to put this that will make sense

mothmanlovr: mr sims was covered in eyes? for a second? and like. surrounded by more eyes. like, floating in the air around him

hyacintheo: covered in eyes as in eylids opening all over his body so he transformed into a horrifying eldritch monster in the approximate shape of our english teacher a la lovecraft, may he not rest in peace the racist old shit

hyacintheo: or covered in eyes as covered in eye symbols

mothmanlovr: only correct takes on lovecraft in this gc

mothmanlovr: but no it was glowing eye symbols

hyacintheo: lame

mothmanlovr: would you have preferred??? the other thing???????

hyacintheo: yes

crypkid77: yes

paranadia: Yes

mothmanlovr: i hate this fucking family

hyacintheo: we 100% got caught tho didn't we

paranadia: I want to say no, but given that we could see in, they could probably see out.

crypkid: also right after it happened mr sims 2 electric boogaloo shut the blinds so. yeah. we definitely got caught

mothmanlovr: do we have? a plan? for how we're gonna explain this if and when we're confronted?

hyacintheo: if we get expelled i Will hunt all of you down and kill you. i Told you this was a bad idea

crypkid77: we'll cover for you theo dw

mothmanlovr: yeah mr. sims might be an eye monster man but it's not like he can prove that you were there

hyacintheo: i REALLY hope you're right about that

\---

Grace and Nadia were tense as they took their seats in their first English class after the break. Mr. Sims wasn’t in the room, but most of the other students had already trickled in, and were talking in small groups. 

“Shit.”

They looked up to see Lavender in the doorway, looking at the board. “What?” She pointed to the right-most side of the board, to the agenda that Mr. Sims always wrote out and that no one looked at.

There, in plain black dry-erase marker. _Quiz._

“Did anyone study?” Nadia asked. Everyone shook their heads. “Well. Shit.”

“We can probably keep him distracted long enough that he’ll forget about it until it’s too late,” Lavender said, taking her seat. 

Other people started chiming in. “Yeah. We just gotta keep getting him off topic.” 

“Shouldn’t be too hard with all of us doing it.”

“What are we gonna get him to rant about? Chemistry?”

“Nah, let’s do history. He always has history hot takes.”

“Good point.” 

They all fell silent as Mr. Sims walked in, stack of freshly printed paper in hand. He glanced up just fast enough to see about half the class quickly look away, feigning innocence. “...Good morning, everyone. I hope you all had a good break.” 

Grace and Nadia held their breath as he took attendance, watching for any sign that they’d been caught the week before.

“Khan?” He called, exactly the same way he’d called the name before.

“Present.” The seconds crawled by as Mr. Sims moved on down the list.

“Zhao?” 

“Here.”

“Excellent,” he said, signing off on the sheet. Nothing about him suggested that anything had happened over the break at all. The girls relaxed slightly. “We’re going to go get copies of Crime and Punishment, and we’ll do a brief intro to Dostoyevsky before your quiz. If you have your library cards, Mrs. Blake already has copies out. Head out whenever you’re ready.”

They dawdled going down to the library and back, making the process take twice as long as it should have. Mr. Sims glanced at the clock on the wall, apprehensive, as the last of them made their way back to their seats. “Alright. Fyodor Dostoyevsky was born in 1821 in Moscow...”

He skimmed through the presentation faster than he usually would, barely giving enough time to talk through the material before moving on to the next slide. As he wrapped up, he checked the time and let out a small breath of relief. “Now that that’s done-”

Lavender’s hand shot up. “Mr. Sims, Leo Tolstoy lived at the same time as Dostoyevsky, right? Were they friends?”

He blinked. “Well, they admired each other’s work, if that’s what you mean. And they were both members of the ALAI, which was a literary association founded by Victor Hugo.”

“Do you think they influenced each other a lot?”

“I suppose it depends on your definition of ‘a lot.’ It’s possible, but Dostoyevsky tended to be more of a psychological novelist, as you’ll see as we get through Crime and Punishment. Tolstoy’s most iconic works were more realist. If that’s all-”

Grace put her hand up. “I read an article that said that Tolstoy’s wife was responsible for editing and copying War and Peace, and she should have gotten more credit for her literary contributions.”

“Yes, Sophia Tolstaya’s work has been largely overlooked, and her legacy was largely distorted by Vladimir Chertkov’s attempts to make himself out to be Tolstoy’s closest confidante. Actually, it’s interesting that you bring that up-”

As Mr. Sims launched into a lecture on the erasure of women in literary history, Lavender turned around in her seat to give Grace a thumbs up. She winked back at her.

“-The issue is that it’s easier to think that some people are just geniuses who create iconic works of art out of nowhere, instead of critically examining where they got their material or who else supported them through the creative process.” The bell rang, and Mr. Sims checked his watch, confusion written plain across his face. “I didn’t talk for that long, did I?” He looked up to see the class hurriedly packing up, trying to hide their grins. “Oh, fine. We’ll do the quiz tomorrow.”

“That’s what you think, sir.”

“I mean it, Lavender. I won’t fall for it again!” He called after her as she waltzed out the door, followed by Grace and Nadia. 

“Can’t stop me from trying!” 

Jon took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. Maybe it would get rid of the headache starting to form behind his eyes.

\---

“I assume you’ve all heard of the trolley problem? If you had me last year, we at least touched on it.”

Jon kept quiet as he waited at the back of Ms Emery’s classroom, watching her teach TOK during his free period.

“Who would like to give a summary? Bella.”

Bella put her hand down. “The trolley problem is a hypothetical scenario where you, as the driver of a runaway trolley, can do nothing and allow the trolley to kill five workers, or make the decision to steer it onto another track and kill one.”

“Very good. And what basic philosophies does the trolley problem represent? Fay.”

“Deontologism and utilitarianism. Choosing to kill the one worker violates the categorical imperative, but allowing five people to die instead of one decreases utility.”

“Thank you, Fay. Now,” she looked around the room, “raise your hand if you would pull the lever.”

Most of the hands in the room went up, some hesitantly. “Because one death is better than five, right?” A murmur of agreement.

“Alright. I’d like to reframe the question.” She leaned back against her desk. “You are a doctor with six patients. Each one is in desperate need of an organ transplant. One needs a liver, one needs a heart, et cetera. The five patients are too far down on their respective waiting lists to get their transplants in time, but if they don’t get organs today, they will all die.” She paused a moment to let the meaning sink in. “You have a choice to make. You can kill one patient for their organs to save the other five, or you can allow all six to die. What do you do?”

The classroom burst out into conversation. Emery picked a name off her attendance sheet. “Reese, what do you think?”

“Directly harming any patient at all is a violation of the hippocratic oath,” Reese said, raising their voice to be heard. 

“But just a moment ago, you subscribed to the philosophy that the choice that caused the least loss of life was the correct one.”

“It’s not the same, Ms. Emery.”

A sandy-haired boy near Jon raised his hand. “Why don’t you just get them all to sign up as organ donors, and then the first one to die naturally gets their organs donated to the other five?”

There was a pause in the cross-talk as Emery considered. “That’s an excellent question,” she said slowly, “except you’ve ruined the premise of my wonderful thought experiment.” A laugh went through the room, and she smiled.

“I have one more wrench to throw in here. Back to the trolley scenario - what if, you could rock the trolley off of the tracks, killing yourself?”

Knowledge flowed suddenly into Jon’s mind. His ears rang as the words poured in.

_The Archivist is what binds assistants to the Institute. If you died, they would all have been free._

“Would you sacrifice yourself to save the people around you?”

_You could have saved Tim. You could have saved them all._

_Why didn’t you?_

Jon inhaled sharply as he gripped the wall for balance, head swimming. Emery looked back at him. “Mr. Sims, are you alright?”

He waved his hand, failing to be nonchalant. “I’m fine, just got dizzy for a second.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Right. Class, we’ll continue our discussion in a moment. In the meantime, I’d like for all of you to watch this lecture. Take notes, if you please.” 

She hit play and strode across the room. “Seriously, Sims, are you okay?” she said, dropping her voice. She took his arm and sat him down at an empty table in the back row, taking the seat next to him. 

Jon kept trying to bluff. “Yes, yes, I’m alright.” He would have gotten away with it too, if the edges of his vision hadn’t decided to go black just then as the Beholding’s aftershocks echoed around his skull. He winced.

“I have pain meds in my desk if you need them. I don’t know how it happened, but I seem to have become a supplier for girls on - well. Don’t tell the nurse’s office.”

Jon gave a wan smile. “I’m alright, thanks.”

Emery pursed her lips as she looked at him, searching for something in his expression. After a long moment, she sighed.

“Jon,” she began hesitantly, “I still don’t know a ton about you. Or your past.” Her eyes flitted across his face, and Jon felt suddenly self conscious of the scars dotted across his jaw, the faded jagged line across his throat. “But self sacrifice is not a moral imperative. Protecting people around you is noble,” she paused, “but you have to protect yourself too. It’s okay to not help if it’s gonna hurt you.”

It was hard to reject her words on instinct while she was meeting his eyes with such a genuine look on her face. Jon deflated a bit.

“Thank you, Emery.”

She gave a small, sad smile, and Jon pointedly shut out the glimpses into her memory that Beholding was offering him. “Anytime.”

The speaker on the screen was concluding his talk, and Emery stood. “If you want to stay, you can, but if you need to leave that’s also ok.”

Jon cleared his throat. “Yes, I have, ah, a class to prep for. Grading to do.”

She nodded, an understanding passing between them before she turned to continue her lesson.

He tried not to think about Sasha as he walked back to his classroom.

\---

Jon glanced at the clock as he waited for the class to quiet down. He cleared his throat pointedly.

“Good morning, everyone. Happy Valentine’s Day. We’ll be starting work on your unit projects today, so I won’t keep you long.” He opened a document with instructions and dragged the window onto the smartboard. “You’ll be working with a partner,” he said, and watched the class burst into quiet negotiations, “that I will assign.” They groaned. “Yes, yes, I know, you hate it when I do this. Cope.” He picked up the paper he’d spent the last night sketching out, and started reading.

“Bobbie and Mackenzie. Jo and Therese. Evelyn and Sidney. Finley and Toby.” As he worked his way down the list, he watched as the people he’d paired with their crushes pretended not to care about the groupings. “Well, get to it.”

*

“Hey,” Jo said, sitting down in the chair next to Therese, “looks like we’re partners.” She smiled warmly, and Therese felt her heart skip a beat. 

“Yeah,” she said, willing her blush to go down. “Looks like it.” As Jo turned away to rummage through her backpack for a pencil, already talking about the ideas she had, Therese waved at Mr. Sims, trying to get his attention without being obvious. He looked up. _Thank you,_ she mouthed, and gave a thumbs up. He winked back, and she grinned. 

\---

“It sort of feels like we haven’t made any progress with Mr. Sims since Christmas.” Nadia said as the four of them lounged across Francis’s bedroom, homework long since abandoned.

Francis sighed. “Yeah, I know,” he said dejectedly. “Let me get the pinboard real quick.” He dug through the mess surrounding his desk, eventually pulling out a corkboard covered in articles, printouts, and red string. He set it down in the middle of the four of them.

“So,” he started, “we know he’s some sort of weird glow-y eye person.”

“Yes. Worked for this institute in London,” Grace said, pointing at the printout of the respective webpage, “from 2011 to late 2018.”

Theo spoke up, not looking away from his computer screen. “The institute’s motto is ‘Audio. Vigilo. Opperior.’ I think the first bit means ‘I listen, I watch,’ since first-person verbs in Latin tend to end in O. In most cases. But ‘audio’ is, you know, audio, and ‘vigilo’ is the root for ‘vigilant.’ Google Translate says ‘opperior’ means ‘wait, or ‘I wait,’’ but it’s Google Translate, so.”

Nadia shook her head at him. “It never fails to astound me that you know Latin.”

“You know how it is.”

“I really don’t.”

Grace furrowed her brow. “‘I listen, I watch, I wait’ is _so_ ominous. I mean, that is _comically_ foreboding.”

“The bit about watching could be connected to the eye glyphs.”

Francis hummed. “A lot of religions have eye-related things. Like, the evil eye and hamsas.”

“Plausible,” Theo said, “but I don’t think it’s about eyes specifically, to be honest. For example,” he pointed to the screen, angling it out, “the institute logo isn’t an eye, it’s an owl. That does fit with the whole ‘impossible knowledge’ thing Mr. Sims has going on though, with the Athena connection and everything.”

“But that’s basically all we found from this place, right? Just branding and staff directories?” 

“Aside from the leaked - what did they call them - statements or whatever from like, twenty years ago, but those were all pretty obviously made up.”

“Have we looked at who is in charge of this place?” Nadia asked. “I feel like that’s important.”

“Good point.” Theo clicked through the sterile corporate template of a website. “Huh.”

“What?”

“They don’t have anything about their leadership listed. If I try to go to the page for it, I just keep getting a page-not-found error.”

“Have you tried the Wayback Machine?”

“Not yet. Hold on a moment.” They were quiet for a bit as Theo typed. “Okay, the latest I could find was someone named Peter Lukas, but only since 2017.” He spun the laptop around to show the rest of the group.

“He looks like the mascot of a fish stick company.” Nadia offered.

“He also has almost no digital footprint. It’s like he doesn’t even exist - especially not since last year.”

“What about before then? When Mr. Sims started working there?” Francis asked.

“‘Elias Bouchard.’ Looks like a dick.”

Grace leaned over to look at his screen. “He has absolutely not seen the sun in years.”

“The real question is, is it because he’s, I don’t know, a vampire or something, or is he just a poster child for iron deficiency.”

“You can be both, I think.”

“Not the point, guys,” Nadia cut in. “Can we see his history, do you think?”

Theo nodded, typed, and paused. “Oh, fun.” He said, distaste clear on his face.

“What?”

“He left the institute because he went to prison. For murder.”

“Who did he kill?”

Theo shrugged. “John Doe, it looks like. They found him in the archives with his head bashed in with a lead pipe. He was, uh,” he struggled as he tried to put it delicately, “not identifiable.”

Francis frowned. “The archives… Where Mr. Sims worked?”

“Oh. There isn’t really any detail about the investigation, but yes.” He paused.

“Mr. Sims wouldn’t- he- right?”

Grace scoffed lightly. “Have you seen the man? He’s just barely taller than me, and he’s got less muscle mass than a seven year old. I don’t think he could beat a man to death if he tried.”

“Incredibly valid point. Is there anything else on there?”

Theo shook his head. “The frequency of archived webpages goes down as you go further back. I don’t think they even had a website until the early nineties, so that’s all I got.”

Nadia started listing things off on her fingers, glancing at the pinboard and Theo’s laptop as she did so. “Okay. So. Mr. Sims used to research the supernatural at an institute that, not-so-coincidentally, is mired in symbolism of knowledge and observation and now he knows things he couldn’t possibly know. The previous head went to prison because he beat a man to death, and the latest one vanished shortly before Mr. Sims came here. He is now almost certainly some sort of knowledge-y eye man, who could probably take over the world if he really wanted to with his ability to make people tell the truth and possibly see into their minds. But instead he teaches us English Language and Literature.” She stopped and let everyone process.

Francis was the first to speak. “So the real question is, _why_?”

\---

“I hope you all enjoyed the weekend,” Jon said to the class at large, writing out a loose schedule on the board. “Now that we’ve finished our unit on Crime and Punishment, it’s time to talk about something important.” He capped the marker and turned around. “Your IOs.”

“We’re doing the IO this year, so next year when you’re worrying about your IAs and the extended essay, you won’t have this on your plate as well. I’m not qualified to actually teach TOK yet, but you’ll be doing your presentations this year for much the same reason. Now,” he said, leaning back on his desk, “raise your hand if you’re nervous.”

About half the class raised their hands. Jon glanced around and nodded.

“Good. You should be.”

Jon waited for the burst of chatter to die down before he continued.

“I’m not saying that because you’re not ready for this. If I thought that was true, I would have pushed for this to be moved to the fall. You’ll be fine. I’m saying that because anxiety is an incredibly effective motivator, and I’d be doing you a disservice if I told you the IO doesn’t matter. It does.”

He opened a slideshow on the board. “Your IOs will be fifteen minutes long, with ten minutes being you telling me about the connections you made between two of the texts we’ve studied this year, and the last five being me asking questions about your points.” He grimaced internally at the amount of compulsion that was going to happen, like it or not. “You can bring ten bullet points and two annotated excerpts into the interview, but I expect you to be able to make points about the texts at large, not just the passages you bring.”

He clicked through the slides as he talked, pausing to let people take notes. “I want you all to have a global issue selected by next week. It should be widely significant, transnational, and it should impact everyday local contexts. I’ll spend some time with each of you in the coming month to refine your talking points, so you need to have at least an idea of what you want to talk about. Remember not to make it too specific, but don’t just pick a global area either. ‘Science, technology and the environment’ is not something you can cover in ten minutes.”

“One of the texts you discuss needs to be a work in translation. An example would be the short stories we read by Garcia-Marquez. I’d like for you all to get in your small groups and discuss your ideas for combinations of texts and global issues for the next, say, twenty minutes. If you have any questions, just ask.”

A hand shot up. “Yes, Oliver.”

“When are we going to start actually doing them?”

“I’m giving you time in class to work on it so you’ll be prepared by the end of this month, but we won’t start until after the Easter holiday. Ideally, everyone will be done by May Day.” Oliver nodded and turned back to his group.

Jon sat back at his desk and sighed. It was going to be a long month.

\---

Jon fell into a rhythm by the second week. Two or three students per period, for every year-one class. He’d set the rest of the group to work independently, call them up one by one, and _ask._

**“What’s your global issue?”**

**“Tell me about your bullet points.”**

**“How do you think author choices might play into this?”**

Every student, without fail, gave concise and clear answers to every question. Most would finish sentences and immediately start scribbling what they just said in the margins of their notes, their eyes lit up in realization.

“I’d like to know if you’re feeling prepared to talk when we start the IOs.” He asked each one.

“Probably,” some said, an uneasy smile on their faces.

“Yes,” said others, masking their anxiety with false confidence.

A few hesitated, and said, “Maybe.” And Jon would keep asking guiding questions, gently compelling them until they knew they would be okay.

\---

Penelope Edwards stopped typing, stared at her screen, and sighed. Theo looked up to see her, brow furrowed.

“I can hear you thinking from over here.”

She huffed a laugh. “Yeah, yeah.” She paused. “Have any of you been seeing Mr. Sims in your dreams recently?”

Theo froze. “Why do you ask?”

“He’s just been showing up a lot in mine. Yours too?” He nodded.

“I was talking to George and he said the same thing,” her sister Sophie offered from across the table. “Weird, huh?”

“Does he… do anything?” Theo asked Penny.

“Nah, he’s just kinda there. He’s in his pajamas sometimes.”

Sophie shrugged. “You’re all probably just stressed about IOs.”

“...Right.” Theo said hesitantly.

She glanced at his expression and laughed. “Theo, whatever you’re thinking, it’s not that deep.” 

“Yeah, to be honest, it’s only a little bit weirder than the recurring nightmare I have where I forget to get data for my biology IA, so I have to turn in a sandwich.” Penelope offered.

Theo laughed, only a little unconvincingly. “Yeah. Probably nothing.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahhh I'm sorry I vanished!! I really did mean to post in August but life happened and then I had to start applying to colleges and then IB happened and then I had an existential crisis about possibly leaving everything and everyone I know and love behind to pursue my dreams and then IB happened AGAIN and it will not STOP
> 
> so here's the good news, I'm back in school so I have inspiration. bad news, I'm back in school so now I have to be like, responsible and stuff. I'm not abandoning this fic, but I also cannot make any guarantees about when the next chapter will be up because I am in HELL! 
> 
> "The EE is only 4000 words," I said. "That's nothing, I can talk about an academic subject for that long," I said. "I don't have to work on my MLI right now, it's not due for another month," I said. I am a fool and a brigand and the consequences of my own actions are coming for me but they have to catch me first. Anyway. It's nearly 3AM. I wrote most of this in the past week and I proofread it like, once. Hope you liked it, I am going to go sleep for thirty six hours straight goodbye now


End file.
